Beastie
by Tinhen
Summary: Audrey Laura Sanders is five years old and stranded at the lab with nothing to do but torture herself some lab techs and spend quality time with her parents' coworkers. SaraGreg. Gratuitous fluff.


****

Beastie

Summary: Audrey Laura Sanders is five years old and stranded at the lab with nothing to do but torture herself some lab techs and spend quality time with her parents' coworkers. Gratuitous fluff.

Disclaimer: I am not, nor am I in any way affiliated with CBS, Anthony Zuiker, or anybody else involved in the production of CSI.

Author's Note: I have never in my entire life written fluff this... gratuitous. In fact, I can count on one foot the number of times I've written fluff at all. But, Lordy, was it fun to write. This fic also pretends that the shifts will stay split.

* * *

****

Beastie

Well-trained vulture that she was, she knew that he was going to crack. And he was going to do it pretty soon. She'd been perched on the second stool in his little lab for more than an hour, staring at him through her too-long dark blond bangs, wearing a vague smile and scrunching her nose up like a rabbit every so often. It was subtle, but with such a subject, most appropriate. He was trying desperately hard to ignore her, and she might have believed he was made of stronger stuff if he didn't twitch every time her nose wiggled. Once he twitched so violently he hurt his eye on the microscope and swore at it. She was an expert at stalking her prey and didn't even giggle, although her smile did take on a distinctly devious glint. Once, Warrick Brown had come in and asked after some results. He'd ruffled her hair, caught her look, laughed, and left with a 'good luck' thumbs-up that made the tech glower harder into his microscope. She couldn't imagine he was getting a good analysis done on that fiber because he certainly wasn't paying it half as much attention as it deserved. His ears were turning a rather unbecoming shade of purple and the color was spreading over his balding scalp.

He was totally going to crack soon.

She wiggled her nose again and this time his face whipped up to lock eyes with her. She froze mid-wiggle and stared back. "Out," he said in a low voice.

She smiled sweetly at him. "But, why?" she asked, her voice very near a whine. He winced visibly at her tone. "I have nothing else to do."

"Go stare at Mia," he said irritably.

She put her hands on her hips, eyes very round and serious. "You know I'm not allowed anywhere near the DNA lab. She'll kill me because I'm a filthy child who'll contaminate her evidence, or break something just 'cause I'm Greg Sanders' daughter. She will kill me, too."

His lips twitched. "That was the idea." She wiggled her nose again. "Your father put you up to this, didn't he?" he demanded. "Let's sic the five-year-old on poor old, long-suffering Hodges and see if we can't get him to snap." He stood up so abruptly that he almost knocked over his chair. She covered a giggle with her hand.

"She's only in kindergarten, you know." Hodges and the little girl turned to see Warrick leaning in the doorway with a file folder in one hand and his keys in the other.

"She's Sanders' progeny," Hodges sneered. "That overrules any extenuating details."

She hopped off her stool and hopped over to Warrick, taking his keys and then putting them on her head. They fell off and hit the floor with a crash. Hodges twitched again while she picked them up and replaced them. "I was bored and you're more fun than PS3," she said simply.

Warrick laughed, but took his keys back for fear she finally break the keyless entry remote that both of her parents had shut in a car door more than once already. He stuck them in his pocket. She crossed her eyes and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "That's a compliment, you know," Warrick told Hodges seriously. "Her father is an addict."

"My mom says it's unhealthy and he's too old for it," she reported cheerfully, wiggling her nose at the tetchy trace tech again. He didn't twitch this time and she frowned in disappointment.

"She's a beastie of the worst kind. Just like Sanders," Hodges sneered. "And no, I'm not any farther with this fiber than I was an hour ago because Miss Rabbit there had to... stare at me."

This was not the kind of news the CSI was after and, frowning, he took the five-year-old's hand. "Come on, Audrey, let's at least give Hodges here a chance to do his job." She looked scandalized at the thought of leaving the only amusement she'd been able to maintain all night, and Warrick noticed. He gave her a conspiratorial wink. Hodges, not looking at either of them, seemed almost excited. "You can come back in an hour when he's finished with my sample," Warrick added, and the tech's face darkened considerably. Audrey smiled evilly at the thought, but it lapsed into worry as she allowed herself to be led out of the trace lab and down the hall. "But what am I going to do for an hour 'til I can mess with him some more?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something," Warrick observed, steering her into the break room and entrusting her to the care of the television. "Why don't you try to beat your dad's high score on that Motocross game that nobody else will play?" He pointed at the game console leaning on the shelf. He didn't mention that no one else would play it because Greg had threatened everyone on pain of death if they so much as touched it. He wasn't taking any chances with his insanely high score.

She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. "No one can beat Dad's high score. It's, like, the highest score anybody ever got on that stupid game." She tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling in silence, which he found disconcerting. She was Greg's daughter, and usually behaved like a little Greg incarnate when a sitter rebelled and dropped her off at the lab with a glare and a frown, especially when Judy the receptionist was the only one to take the little girl and both her parents were out in the field. Audrey had the eerie habit of unemotionally reporting the more disgusting details of her parents' jobs to the poor, unsuspecting girls they hired to make sure she didn't accidentally kill herself at home. She loved to jump around to her father's old CDs. Sometimes Warrick felt sorry for her that she didn't have any clingy grandparents.

"Where are your parents?" He changed the subject. All the swing shifters were in the field when he got to work and he didn't remember where Grissom had sent her mother, but he knew that Audrey would know. He also didn't really have anything pressing to do, and couldn't really go any further with his own investigation until he knew what the blue fiber he'd lifted from the backseat of his victim's Miata was exactly. Audrey slumped onto the couch and stared up at him dolefully.

"My mom's on a floater-decomp out at Lake Mead with Sofia and Grissom. Dad and Nick and Catherine are doing a DB in North Vegas, but they should be back soon 'cause their shift is almost over." She frowned. "Mom's going to stink like dead person when she comes back, and Dad'll tell her and she'll get mad because she's touchy about everything lately and then we'll all go home and not talk because everybody's mad. Warrick, tell Dad not to tell her she stinks."

Warrick couldn't not smile at the way she spoke. Of course her mother was touchy; that was part of her personality, although now that he was thinking about it, she had seemed worse than usual of late. "You know nobody can tell your dad what to do, Audrey," he warned.

She crossed her arms and looked so pathetically sad that Warrick felt uncomfortable. He didn't have his own children, and other than this one, the only child he'd ever really had any interest in was now almost twenty, at Stanford, and not speaking to her mother. Catherine had been very reluctant to let her daughter go so far away, and Lindsey had gone to Sam Braun for tuition money. Catherine had not quite forgiven her.

"They're so stupid, though," she whined, blowing up at her shaggy bangs. "I need a haircut and Mommy doesn't sleep anymore, she just throws up and yells at the cat and Dad has no idea anything isn't okay 'cause he's Dad. Warrick, would you please tell them to stop being so dumb? They don't _listen_ to me!"

Warrick, not sure what else he could do, sat down next to her and put his arm around her. She snuggled down into his side and rested her chin on his chest, staring up at him with Greg's huge brown eyes. "They'll figure it out soon enough, Audrey," he said, patting her head with his other hand.

She sighed. "I hope so. Dad tried to make her laugh by wearing this pirate outfit around the house when she got home this morning. Like, the black thing on his eye and the red cloth thing around his waist and everything. She smiled like it hurt and then locked herself in the bathroom for, like, forever. Me and Dad just stood there. She's so mean."

At this point, Warrick had a fair idea what exactly had gone wrong in the Sanders household, but if none of its inhabitants had cottoned on yet, he wasn't going to help them along. He figured it would be far too much fun later to watch Greg grovel and beg for forgiveness over desiccated corpses and then warn her to not step there, please, and be careful for once. "She's your mom, though. She's allowed to be mean."

Audrey gave him a look that told him she wasn't fooled. "But Dad was doing his dumb funny thing and she just went and barfed up breakfast." She sighed. "I don't want them to break up."

"Who's breaking up?"

Warrick and Audrey looked up to find Greg standing in the break room doorway, still wearing his field vest and looking windblown. The two shared a look and Warrick said, "Uh, nobody."

Greg came in, eying them suspiciously, and poked his head in the refrigerator. "Did you eat my enchilada?" he asked, glancing at his daughter, who buried her face in Warrick's armpit and nodded. "Hmm. I'll have to eat Hodges'... thing here." He pulled a Tupperware container out and cracked it open. He sniffed at it, deemed it edible, and threw it in the microwave. While his food heated, he leaned against the counter and stared at the other two. After a few moments, a slow smile spread across his face. "Did you start the plan?"

"I have to take a break 'cause Warrick says Hodges has to do some work while he's here." She slipped away from Warrick and went over to stand next to Greg. He scooped her up and placed her on the edge of the counter. She swung her feet in the dead air and looked up at them both with sad eyes. "I was having so much fun and Warrick made me stop."

Greg laughed. "Warrick's just a big, old party pooper."

"You're right about that," Hodges agreed, entering the room, still glowering. "I, on the other hand, am fun."

"A real barrel full of monkeys," Greg deadpanned. The microwave beeped but at the tech's appearance, Greg did not remove the food. He just stood there with a suspicious look on his face, then shrugged off his vest and laid it over the back of a chair.

Audrey tipped her head to the side and eyed Hodges speculatively. "How would a barrel full of monkeys be fun? I think it would be scary." Audrey did not like monkeys.

Greg grinned. "That's what I mean, actually," he said, gesturing at Hodges to make his point.

Hodges looked wary, and then pointedly ignored both Sanderses. He held up a piece of paper in Warrick's direction. "Got your results. It's cotton pile with a side of burnt vegetable fat. Definitely a towel, and definitely used at your scene."

Warrick sighed, even though this was good news, and heaved himself up off the couch. "Well, good night," he said. "Unlike you, I have another few hours to go with my shift." Audrey and Greg waved, the girl somewhat halfheartedly. After Hodges was gone, Greg took the food out of the microwave.

He glanced over at his daughter, who looked utterly woebegone, sitting there all by herself with no one to torment. "Hey, Bump, c'mere," he said. She perked up at the sound of her old nickname but didn't come any closer. When her mother was pregnant with her, before they knew she was going to be a she, they had called her 'Bump' because that was really all she had been. It had stuck after the birth. "No, really, Aud," Greg said, reaching out his hands. "I have something I think'll make you happy."

"I want to go stare at Hodges some more," she said, almost whining, but she hopped down from the counter, landing catlike on the floor.

His brow furrowed at her choice of wording. "Oh, no, babe. Never say that again. You want to make faces at him, sure. But staring at him leaves you vulnerable to his Jedi mind tricks." He sat down at the table and wiggled his fingers at her, evoking a giggle. She acquiesced, her curiosity too much for her. She climbed up into his lap and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his chest. "Now, your mom wanted me to wait until she got home, so she's going to be mad--"

"Mom's always mad," Audrey said matter-of-factly. He winced, but nodded.

"Well, this is why she's been mad the last couple months--"

"You're pregnant?" He stopped and looked up as Nick strolled into the break room. Understanding dawned and Audrey opened her mouth in an "o" shape and twisted around to look her father in the face.

"Really?" she squealed. "Is that why she's so mean? A new Bump?"

"Thank you so much," Greg said to his fellow swing shifter rummaging through the fridge, closing his eyes. "Yes," he added to his daughter. "You're going to have a new baby to torment."

Audrey hugged him around the neck so tightly his face flushed from cut-off circulation and then she jumped down. "I'm going to go stare at Hodges some more."

Shaking his head, Greg glanced at the rather unappetizing-looking contraband food and sighed. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the table. Nick, crackling the plastic wrapping on some junk food he'd taken out of his stash behind one of Grissom's more disgusting experiments, sat down next to him and patted his shoulder. "She still won't marry you, will she?" he asked soberly.

"Nope," Greg said, voice muffled by the table. "She still thinks that this is a dream and that marrying me will make her wake up and find herself alone and scared." He sat up and met Nick's concerned eyes. "Now, don't get me wrong. Having two children with Sara Sidle is, like, a wet dream I never thought would come true for me. It is kind of..."

Nick quirked his eyebrows. "Surreal?" he offered.

"Yeah," Greg said, sighing. "It's surreal. I figured the pregnancy thing out this morning, and after Audrey left for school we talked. Sara's happy enough about the baby, I guess. I don't think it's sunk in to her yet, though. Now she can't just say that she had an indiscretion with that Level One with the crazy hair and got pregnant and he had to be moved to a whole different shift because of their new... relationship? ...situation? A second indiscretion makes it..."

This time Nick did laugh. "Real?" he suggested. Greg groaned and banged his forehead on the table.

A moment later Audrey came skidding into the room with a huge grin on her face. She struck a pose for Nick as he stood up and cracked his neck, who laughed and shook his head, then yawned and bid them a good night. Audrey climbed back up into her father's lap and rested her head on his shoulder. "I love you, Dad," she whispered.

"I love you, too, Bump," he told her, ineffectually smoothing down her hair.

She pulled back to look him in the face. "I love you but you're not as much fun as Hodges is to scare."

* * *

End.

A few notes, I suppose. I did not go into detail about the events surrounding Audrey's conception, although there was a little light shed on the Sidle-Sanders family situation near the end. Truthfully, that doesn't matter. Another note of clarification: Greg and Warrick essentially swapped shifts while Sara was pregnant with Audrey.

Dedicated to Kyle with a hearty "good luck at school."

Begun August ninth, 2005, and finished August twenty-sixth, 2005 (my birthday).


End file.
